I can see why you have trouble accepting land barons, and why "land speculation" bothers you -- because you believe deeply "there is no land". It's not that you can't accept a metaphor, or have pierced a metaphor, it's that you cannot accept human valuation, which is more than a metaphor. When people buy land, they buy land. They don't have the problem you do valuing it and living the metaphor, not just reading it. They hold it, and put things on it, and put it for sale, and buy more. It's not just a shelf space for display of content or game trophies -- it's intrinsically land, because the space around them -- privacy, building potential, etc. -- is always what they are buying. Hence the attractiveness of open spaces sims. Of course the open spaces sims are empty calories. They don't represent growth so much as a failure of the Linden's mainland policy and the unravelling of their island policy.